Reviews

The World is Not Enough

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Aspects of The World Is Not Enough may be individually lauded, surely, such as Sophie Marceau as a manipulative temptress, or Robert Carlyle as the inhumanly durable villain. Even the film’s ludicrous action sequences (the opening scene begins in an office building and ends on a hot air balloon; a chase sequence, via a pair of able speedboats, appends the two locations) are generally well crafted. These potential merits excepted, The World Is Not Enough is a collection of the worst puns I have ever heard in a single film.

In the final confrontation, which occurs inside a submarine, Renard, the Villain, leers at Bond and Dr. Jones, the Girl, inserting a plug of plutonium inside the vessel’s nuclear reactor (this, do know, would trigger some explosion crucial to the promotion of the villain’s entrepreneurial scheme). He leers, “Velcome to my nuclear family.” There are others, and each halts the train as abruptly this one.

Even with such lame dialogue, the film would potentially have been redeemed had Denise Richards not been cast as arguably the worst Bond girl in the entire franchise. She is Dr. Christmas Jones, an atomic physicist, introduced in shorts and tank top that makes her bust a prominent cantilever in the film’s weak architecture. Her performance is so poor she disables the camp the aforementioned puns would otherwise foster.